Anonymous, Lulzsec Total War Looming

Hacker groups Lulzsec & Anonymous have started to trade blows publicly in what could lead to a massive, unprecedented battle between two hacker communities that have a lot in common.

Lulzsec posted on its Twitter account "Just saw a thread on /b/ (ed: 4chan.org's message board) where they’re trying to hunt us: you /b/tards realize that we are everything you’ve ever tried to be?”

To which Anonymous replied "We are the concentrated success of 2005 /b/, being ‘hunted’ by the 2011 furry horde. Challenge accepted, losers”.

4Chan is the birth place of Anonymous and the recent spate of seemingly random and unprovoked attacks by Lulzsec on soft targets like gaming websites Minecraft and EVE Online have apparently irked users of /v/, the video game sub-forum on 4chan.org.

Ironically, while Lulzsec has strenuously denied any link with Anonymous, it did acknowledge that it originated from the same core group of hackers that forms the entity commonly known as Anonymous; indeed, the expression Lulz is used to describe the excitement generated by hacking websites.

But while most of the Anonymous attacks seem to be politically motivated, the ones by Lulzsec seem to hit anyone and everyone.

What's next? One very possible outcome of the tussle between the two is that members of each group may start to divulge the identities of their rivals in order to take them down.